Profoundy Thoughts and Epiphanies

[Eireanne]

A year goes by (now it's been three 23), and you forget...you get lulled into a sense of monotony, thinking it's ok, there will be time for this, I'll remember...but the memories overlap, and some are weighed down by time...others lost forever. I lie here listening to the driving rain, and I think...it's November rain, the way it does, each and ever November...for every November to come...then I start to think, was it always so? Perhaps I should keep track of the weather, follow and chart it's patterns, as I should be following and charting my own. For these past few days have been an epiphany, where there is so much realization, and everything is so much clearer. I want to take the time to savor it all, but I also want to get it down to make sure I remember it all, for surely there is a message and a lesson that is screaming to be learned. I am ready to learn it now.

I'm not so sure I'm ready for anything now. I seem to be so out of focus here, and instead of searching for me, I've been searching for clarity, because each time I almost get to the surface, I let it get covered back up by the mundane.  Today I'm making a real effort to get to the bottom of a lot of things, and hopefully be able to find myself somewhere in it.  To find the person I was when I wrote that.

So here goes...

Catcher in the Rye, the first of the classics I intend on reading this summer. Overall, I really didn't like it-except for the very last line, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you'll start missing everybody." That's very good advice, and I think I'll follow it - no one but you my diary.

I wrote that in 2003, and not only do I not remember most of Catcher in the Rye, I strayed from my advice.  Somehow, I have to find my way back there.


I am still trying to find myself...college was the biggest setback of my life Funny, bc it was just one in a long line of setbacks that basically did NOT set me up for success.  Oh well, nothing I can do about that now.

I have no redeeming qualities. I am worthless. In all the years I've been on this plane of existence, I have nothing to show for it. I have not made any sort of positive imprint on anyone I've come in contact with. I have not amounted to anything. I am not attractive, nor am I talented. There is not one thing about me that you can say I can do better than anyone else, unless that thing is to fail.

I am a remarkable failure.

As per usual, I'm really falling behind in things I should be doing.  M keeps reminding me that it's a work in progress, so slowly but surely I will see the end of this mess.

I've been very depressed and frustrated lately.  So much so that I just haven't been progressing. I remind myself so much of characteristics that I loathe that I hate myself, and can't imagine anyone else being able to tolerate me.  I have very little patience for anyone these days, and have become, once again, quite hypocritical. I shoot venomous anger out at others for no apparent reason. I withdraw into myself, but not to seek solace, simply avoidance. I seek to find the answers, when I already know what they are, I'm just too afraid to face them. I feel adrift, and unsure of myself. I've veered off the path and don't know how to find it again. There are things coming up that terrify me, and I've no one to confide in. There are things approaching that make me feel helpless and alone.  I've grown bitter in my solitude, and yet I wish to be alone. I just can't seem to make heads nor tails of anything these days. As per usual, my horrors remind me...

I don't remember writing this, or what was going on when I wrote this, so instead I'm just holding space and my parts are validating all the ways people abandoned me to cause me to hate myself, allowing them to tell me what a failure I was, until I believed it myself. Society does it's best to show me there is no comparison between the path my life has taken, and I measured myself against their expectations, of course I have no inherent worth - I'm not a productive member of society!

Even the pandemic showed me that society has deemed me an acceptable loss.  How else am I supposed to feel about myself? Silly humans.

I'm an amazing, articulate, talented person...but there's so much more to me than that. There's the self-depreciating part of me that is more whistling in the dark than anything else. There's the sarcastic side, which I account to living so long in N. There is a part of me that tries to let everyone around know how much they are valued, simply because it doesn't take much to increase someone's sense of self worth. I have a simplistic strive for happiness.

Overlying every part of me is a suffocating blanket of insecurity, that I doubt myself and my intentions at every turn. When things are fine, I overlook them, I ignore the whisperings of doubt that linger right below the surface. But then they get louder and I have to stop and question my actions.

I just can't tell who I am anymore.


When ppl talk about doing inner child work, I struggle, because I have no inner child.  This is what I have, an inner 30 year old who was so lost and struggled to just fit in, so she could have friends, be accepted, have a job where her manager didn't hate and abuse her, have a relationship, know what it is to feel love...and I have such compassion for that person now who was told for so long she was wrong to want and feel these things, simply because no one took the time to see her ask was reasonable, and it was they who were misconstruing it.

[Eireanne]

I'm supposed to be doing all this soul searching, but I'm not even sure where to start. There are so many layers to delve through, I feel like an onion. If I keep peeling away, eventually...will there be nothing left?

Here's something that came to my mind...

Looking back over the past 3 years, the first year, I made 23,225.97 the year after that brought home 27,839,97. The third year I took in 16,643.98 before I realized that no amount of money was worth what I was going through each day...especially the no amount of money I was bringing home. The funny thing is, the more I made, the less I seemed to have, and it wasn't because I was living the rich American life, buying well past my means...it was something that I just couldn't define, something I couldn't put my finger on, something that exceeded the cost of living.

I just can't seem to see straight any more. I can't clearly see what my goals are. I feel stuck, and I feel like all of the people I thought were my friends are holding me at arms length for fear I'm going to act like a sponge, because I'm down and needy right now.

Maybe that's all I am, and I'm not a good friend, and that's why I feel so alone. Maybe I'm not a good teacher, and that's why I can't find a job.

I can barely breathe, and I'm so very down right now. I can't imagine anyone hiring me. I mean, why would they, I'm a YANKEE, an outsider...they want to hire one of their own, watch out for your kin, that sort of thing around here. I mean, I'm that desperate that I'm applying in LV for gods sake. I LOATHE it there. So I'm sitting around beating myself up, why didn't I put in an app sooner? Why did I sit around and wait for the job I was TOLD I was getting.

Now if I don't get a teaching job, it's going to be near impossible to explain the lapse...I mean it's hard enough trying to explain why I left my job mid-year, and if that isn't a red flag screaming, Don't hire that girl, she's a BAD TEACHER, I don't know what is.

I thought for sure well hey, if I don't get a teaching job, I'll just go back to school, but guess what, that costs money, and if I don't have enough money to even support myself, how am I supposed to find the money it takes to go back to school?


I realized that no amount of money was worth what I was going through each day...especially the no amount of money I was bringing home.

So many times I've been in this position. It's called survival mode.  Lack of social support. Lack of support at work.  The difference my life could have taken if I had experienced support. Sigh.

[Eireanne]

More from my old journal...20 years ago

I had dreams about my parents last night, so I guess it's time to write them, but I fear that bridge is already burned, and I can't think of anything to say without sounding bitter and angry. 30 years of bitterness, anger, resentment...hard to cover up in a letter. I myself don't feel anger, but apparently it shows in my writing, as friend of mine pointed out not too long ago. Since then, I've just been distancing myself from everyone ...being as all she seems to bring me is nightmares, I think I'll hold off on calling her for that tidbit. I'll just experiment until I figure it out. It's so funny, I mean, aside from the nightmares (which I've had all my life) I feel free from her, I don't have her disappointment in me looming over every little thing I do. I finally figured out it's her disappointment in herself, nothing to do with me, so to be blunt, she can go f- herself, I've been on my own for so long, I don't think I ever needed HER, I just needed the idea of her, and sorry folks, but she falls way short.

I told her once before about the nightmares I've had. It was around the time I tried explaining to her about my psycho abilities and the things I can see and do. She was upset that I didn't tell her sooner...because to know that in every nightmare I have that she plays a role in, she betrays me in some horrific way would be GOOD for her to hear, right?

In effort to tie up loose ends, I've been making phone calls and writing letters. I'm NOT liking the things I'm hearing, and basically all I can keep calculating in my head is the $1,000's lost over the past few years...Now I find out that I am not eligible for my sick leave money...which means that all those days I went to school instead of calling out sick? Well, I don't see a dime of it. So much for integrity.

I keep beating myself up, if I didn't quit my contract, I could have called out every day for A MONTH and gotten paid for it. I could have gone in every day and READ A BOOK and gotten PAID FOR IT! *sobs*

This is what taking chances gets you, this is what sticking your neck out does, and this is what standing up for doing what's right leaves you with.

[Eireanne]

What are the stories you tell yourself about what is going on in your world right now?

I'm focusing on finishing up old projects in hopes that I fill my mind up with enough positivity, I can withstand the rejection sensitivity I know is probably still there, right under the surface. 

I tell myself I'll be lucky if I manage to find a job by this time next year.  I embrace the thought of prolonging my return to work, so I can better establish good habits...I'm still stuck in good intentions, wasting time doing things that aren't in my higher good.  But it's funny, the things that I read, don't coincide with the way I feel, never have, so I decide, well let me read through them all and sift my way through ideas I want to keep, vs. ideas I want to through away.

As I read through them, shadows of relationships I've had with people who are no longer in my life float to the surface, and I wonder, if I were to write them a letter, how would I frame it? Sometimes parts come up, sometimes observations.

The stories I tell myself about those relationships come up as well. 

There's a fear I have now, in finally making new friends, I want to make a list of the things I consider doing with them, and how that list gives me hope, but I recall every time in the past when my stories expose patterns of traumatic experiences.  The hoping for the best, but anticipating the worst - the part that reminds me of every time I've needed to be attuned to, I've been told it's because I'm too negative.  That I have to believe it to see it! That I'm pessimistic for wanting to verbalize my fears and have them validated. 

How might those interpretations be keeping you from learning how to be happy?

Still anticipatory grief and thinking I need to be a certain amount "done" building a foundation...still needing my training wheels...Like in the realization (cart before the horse) I need to be/have platonic friends before I'm ready to be in a relationship again...and using the relationships I have now as practice, but needing to keep reminding myself not to get my hopes up too much, because everything is temporary. 


Synchronicities can also be people, places or events that our soul attracts into our life to help us evolve to higher consciousness or to place emphasis on something that is going on in our lives. The more consciously aware we become of how our soul manifests incidents, the higher our frequency becomes and the faster we manifest positively.

I don't know, I had been seeing them for a while and I don't think it signified or correlated with anything.  Like having A text the moment I realized I was "breaking up with him" or anticipating the pattern he'd stop speaking to me once I lost my job...which happened...but since I had knowing it was, just not known how...It's too hard to explain...I don't think my cassandra complex in pattern recognition is tied to noticing synchronicities.

[Eireanne]

Our fear is an overinflated response to the psychological conditioning people-pleasers have learned

We fear the backlash that comes from expressing an independent opinion that differs from our what our family believes or what society defines as the norm. Our conditioning has us believing that being unique is less safe, and that belief holds us back from fulfilling our potential.

Realizing we are moving in the wrong direction is the foundation to becoming self-empowered.

I'm going through these articles and feeling a sort of way. At first, because the previous article lumped everything into anxiety/depression category, as if there are NO OTHER explanations for not being able to focus, and of course isolation was presented in a way that it's something you are choosing - turning down offers to hang out, for example.

This article is on people pleasing, and it again, makes me feel a sort of way for people to minimize "the fear of thinking this will happen" and the years I was dismissed each time I pointed out it WAS happening.  It's not that I went along and behaved a certain way so people would like me.
 It's any time I tried being self empowered and standing up for myself, I WOULD lose everything. And grappling with that loss now is so hard. Especially with my therapist, because every time I try to go in linear order, I end up skipping all over the place at all the times the same thing happened. Especially since the same things are happening now.

For years, people kept telling me to "Stop worrying what other ppl think of you" and I never DO worry about stuff like that, I guess it's hard to describe when you're in survival mode. I never needed people to "like" me, I needed people to accept me. I needed ONE manager who supported me, or had my back, so I wasn't always the first to be eliminated because I wasn't part of the clique.  I needed a group of girlfriends who I could learn how to be social with, so I understood things like banter and small talk.  How to do my hair and  makeup.  Feeling a sense of being cared for by others.  It's what I've wanted...someone to help with things so I didn't always feel so adrift and alone.  I didn't want to be LIKED, I just didn't want to be actively disliked.  I just wanted to be one of those people that if someone mentioned them, no one had anything bad to say about them.  But that's not the case when you are being bullied.  Where everyone around you would rather talk about you than to you.

[Eireanne]

Reflecting on how I ask people for the help I need and they give me the help they are willing to give, but not what I need/ask for. 

For example, how to simply express what I'm working on now, how to get to a place where I can reframe what happened in a way that will be palatable to HR and recruiters, which is where I was in March and asked for a coworkers help - specifically, can he just co-work with me, either via chat window or I'll sit down in the cubicle with him at work, so I can have him to brainstorm ideas with, and he responded:

Instead of trying to write with any sense of coherence, keep plugging away at those ramblings. Take time to process them. Perhaps work through them with your therapist and see if you can read through your thoughts and then pick out the things that you need to convey later.

Um, my therapist is not going to help me work on my resume, that's what I was asking YOUR help with, thanks for nothing.

I followed up with him, telling him I needed to cognitively rehearse...and not having ANYONE else to ask, I once again asked him for support, but he didn't have the capacity.  About 3 weeks later, I had a really bad day and msged him: I'm feeling very invalidated and isolated today.  Stupid recurring theme in my life, and I'm sure you're swamped.  How do I get people to listen? How can I make this feeling stop so I can get done all the things I need to today?  Can I just pretend I'm sitting next to you like we did that day at the office?

Couldn't even bother replying to that one. 

[Eireanne]

I feel I can have friends as long as I never have any needs and everything in my life is 100% ok and ask long as I ask someone else for help (but never them) then they'll talk to me, but as soon as I'm like, hey, I could use your help with something, they bail.  I was watching a TV show earlier, and this woman was texting this other woman relentlessly, "hey, even though you don't want to talk, know I'm here for you" and I thought, hmmm THAT is self isolating.  When I say, "hey, I'm feeling really isolated and I really need someone to talk to" telling me, "I can't even imagine" and then never texting me again?  Pffft.

[Eireanne]

Anger wants to say a few things, because we're watching a YouTube video about Best Practices for Anxiety Treatment | Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and right away I knew I was going to have some problems with it, but I keep thinking "open mind" so I'm TRYING.  I'm even taking notes. 

My social isolation has caused me to have ineffective interpersonal skills - I am taking steps to work on that.

I don't have effective current social support - difficulty bearing the weight of everything on their own shoulders.

Challenges and opportunities for growth and learning and not hardships and obstacles

I'm being given language to frame the things I'm struggling with*

But then she starts talking about...irrational fears

survival is not an irrational fear

she says focus on exceptions

I've literally been eliminated from every position I've ever had, there are no exceptions, this is not irrational, this is something that happens to me that is out of my control.

Well now, something happened to you is victim language, quit acting like a victim and do something.

See? How is CBT helpful? I don't see it...it goes on...

...if something is fearsome let's look at the evidence for and against it instead making excuses

Let's break that down, shall we? I've been under/unemployed for the past 15 years.  In survival mode.  Trapped in a pattern.  These are not excuses, this is a fact. 

I get a job and everyone at that job loves me, I become indispensable and then the direct manager, the one in charge of whether or not I get fired doesn't like me, I do everything I can to make them happy, but nothing I do works, and then they find a reason to eliminate my position.  I lose my job. I lose my friends. I have no social support because work took up all of my life and I had no social life because I was just doing everything I could not to get fired, so I'd often work through lunch, or I'd work positions where it was expected you work from your desk, the list goes on and on...this is the only life I KNEW, I've never had an exception to being treated like an asset and not a human.  I was taught from a young age you need to be of service.  But my body and brain started to deteriorate under the strain of bearing the weight of everything on their own shoulders

What did I fear? Being eliminated Is that an irrational fear? Let's see.  Lose your job, lose your income, lose your health insurance. Lose your ability to obtain medication.  Lose your ability to be able to get adequate health care should you get sick. (let's add in a healthy dose of we don't know how bad we're going to react to covid symptoms, because everyone is different) Still irrational? Previous experience tells us it will take us years to find employment again, which means we'll run out of money...to pay our utilities...so we keep the air/heat off...we stop eating....we'll eventually run out of money to pay rent and get evicted. 

Each of these things sounds like catastrophizing, yet all of these things have happened to me, multiples times before.  To the point it became a trauma.  To get my position eliminated meant I would not be able to survive without effective current social support.

But I've been here before. It's a pattern, you see. So I prepared for it, like a domestic violence survivor prepares to escape her abuser. Because that's what I did.  It just took me years to see it as abuse.  Because for years I was told by therapists that I had black and white thinking and irrational fears. 

Let's continue...

social interventions - improve their relationship with their self (which goes with self-esteem) improvement. people are going to feel less anxious about getting their needs and wants met if they know what their needs and wants are. so part of that is becoming mindful cuz a lot
of our clients don't know what they need and want...

I knew what I needed, what I wanted. I asked for it continuously, but no one has ever taught me the successful way to get the help I need. I don't understand how I'm supposed to learn it myself, in isolation - these people take it for granted someone must have taught me by now...I did everything they told me to.

I went to my manager who wrote me up
I reported her to HR who didn't get back to me until after I was eliminated
I was told to call EAP they told me it was a conflict of interest
I talked to attorneys they said my case was too complicated
I made endless calls to organizations and was told they couldn't help
I went to all of my friends and learned they weren't actually my friends

I lost my job, my income, my health insurance, my friends, and the pattern repeated itself down to the people that were a part of my life during previous loops.  So odd and interesting.  Fascinating. 

So this time I study it, like a scientist. I research, I listen to god awful videos that trigger me.  So I can find the vocabulary I need to better advocate for myself, to learn how to build my interpersonal skills up again.  I keep making plans and they keep getting cancelled.  I keep trying to make other plans and then there's weather and illness and busyness and life. 

I keep worrying the things I'm doing to try to "put myself out there" are insanity because I have tried the same thing over and over again and expected different results, but it's all about mindset or something.  And besides, I plan on bringing my journal. So if nothing else, I have taken myself out on a date 


This is the worst:

develop assertiveness skills so they can ask for help when they need it. anxiety - that's the body saying there's a threat, well if there's a threat maybe you need some help dealing with it, people need to be willing and able to ask for help and not feel like that's going to lead them to be rejected.

Why yes, I agree.

The message I receive is that I was rejected because I'm not assertive. That L bullied me because I wasn't assertive.  Dan abused me because I wasn't assertive.  So where exactly am I supposed to learn assertiveness, with NO interpersonal relationships to practice them?

I don't even know what to say...still...about how to explain anything, let alone figure out how to say it with assertiveness.

CBT makes me feel like I'm not taking responsibility and I feel the negative reel kick in when I spend too much time in this space.  Definitely not empowering.